Two sloth bear cubs save their paws from the hot ground during a search for food in the Daroji Bear Sanctuary in Karnataka, India in the second decade of January 2025. (Photo by Baiju Patil/Solent News)

People exercise in Primrose Hill in London, Britain, 20 March 2025. The first day of spring in the UK astronomically occurs on the vernal equinox where earth's axis is not tilted towards or away from the sun, resulting in an equal amount of day and night on all latitudes. (Photo by Neil Hall/EPA/EFE)

A red deer looks as though it is yawning while it bellows at sunrise. The stag created a cloud of steamy breath as it was warmed by the first light of the sun in Richmond Park, London on October 28, 2025. (Photo by Cristian Vasile/Solent News & Photo Agency)

A puma rolls and yawns on frost-covered ground in Laguna Amarga, Torres del Paine, Chile in the first decade of December 2025, pausing briefly after several hours of rest before continuing on her way. (Photo by Sara Jenner/Solent News & Photo Agency)

“Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Nicknamed the “Bronze Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, and even the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture and to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre”.

Photo: American entertainer Josephine Baker in costume for her famous “banana dance”. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo by Walery/Getty Images)

Winner, photojournalism. Elephant in the room, by Adam Oswell, Australia Zoo. Visitors watch a young elephant performing underwater. Oswell was disturbed by this scene, and organisations concerned with the welfare of captive elephants say performances like this encourage unnatural behaviour. In Thailand, there are now more elephants in captivity than in the wild. With the Covid pandemic causing tourism to collapse, elephant sanctuaries are becoming overwhelmed with animals that can no longer be looked after by their owners. (Photo by Adam Oswell/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021)

Polar bear twins make their first public appearance with their mother “Freedom” at Ouwehands Zoo Rhenen, in Rhenen, The Netherlands, 19 February 2015. The twins, who were born in November 2014, have not been named because their gender has not yet been determined. (Photo by Bart Maat/EPA)

A couple of monkeys look from inside their cage at a rescue and rehabilitation center in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, November 22, 2014. Elba Munoz who runs the center, says that one of the goals of the Center for the Rescue and Rehabilitation of Primates is to stop the trafficking of the animals. (Photo by Luis Hidalgo/AP Photo)